Frozen Face

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He's human. But he might as well be a robot, or wearing a mask, for all the emotions that his face shows.

Nerve damage or scars prevent him from showing any expression. Nothing, from abject terror to astounded delight to overwhelming fury to soul-shaking grief, can change his face. (Tears may be possible.)

May make him appear as The Stoic, the Tin Man, or the Perpetual Frowner, but appearances are deceiving. Invariably deeply traumatized — after all, he got the scars somewhere. Ironically enough, the more visible the scars are, the less likely people are to assume the lack of facial expression means no feelings. (They have other problems, but they do undermine that assumption.)

Sometimes an advantage, even for the same characters, when they do not reveal emotions they do not want to.

Examples

In the first season, a man has his brain installed in a tank he helped to create - when Section 9 immobilize him, he soon starts moving again after seeing his parents, but this time entirely without the engine noise, implying that he's moving on the force of will alone. He also gets his brain fried because there's no way to tell his intentions as he's suddenly approaching them, and may or may not have been trying to kill them.

In 2nd Gig, Hideo Kuze has a beautifully sculpted artificial face. Which can't move. His mouth doesn't even move when he talks. It turns out that this is for the exact same reason his face is so beautiful - expert face-sculptors for cyborg bodies like to limit the range of movement for their more impressive creations in order to avoid wear and tear. As such, it takes a great deal of stress for him to overcome his respect for the work of art attached to his skull and start properly emoting.

Oddly enough, she makes it cute. However, the same cannot be said for the similarly expressionless cute little boy July's attempts at smiling.

Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist is trapped inside a highly intimidating suit of armor with a menacing countenance, a rather inappropriate appearance for a shy, sensitive, sweet boy like him. Only when the show's art goes Super-Deformed can he truly express himself.

Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Same cute (bordering on creepy at some points) expression even with the horrible things happening to the heroines, apparently not changing even when Kyubey himself is shot full of holes. This is likely the first sign that fans took not to trust him. Some of the DVD releases have been reanimated to make him even less expressive. However, Kyubey has facial expressions in the manga.

He finally starts to properly emote when Homura does him in in Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion. Whatever Homura did to him left him twitching in agony and utterly mentally destroyed, which Kyubey totally had coming.

In Kotoura-san, Dai'chi's weird fish-lips + Scary Shiny Glasses combo seems to be a sort of poker-face he guards himself with instinctively. As the series goes on, it becomes clear that he's just naturally reserved like that.

In one episode of Aggressive Retsuko, Retsuko gets angry that Eaglette won't make any funny faces when Retsuko, Ape Admin, and Eaglette are all drunk and taking pictures of themselves making funny faces, until Eaglette explains that she does not have facial muscles.

The Joker is often depicted with a hideously permanent grin on his face. Depending on the Artist. There's been a number of artists who've shown the Joker as capable of showing other expressions on his face.

Two-Face is a partial version. The "good" side can show emotions, but the burnt half will always remain... burnt and immobile.

In Batman, Jack Nicholson wears some rather disturbing makeup and prosthetics to portray the Joker's disfigured smile in live action.

In The Dark Knight, you can see the muscles in the burnt half of Two-Face's face moving, and it seems like its at least trying to convey emotion the same as the intact half, but that side lacks the expressive parts of the face like lips and eyebrows for said muscles to actually move around, so the end result is still this trope. The same film also gives the Joker an apparently normal range of facial expressions, and represents his trademark "grin" in a wholly different and more realistic fashion that makes him even more terrifying.

The DCAU averts this in both cases. The Joker is extremely expressive; his usual smile is all crazy rather than paralysis. Two-Face's bad side is distorted by the scars but still mobile, giving it the impression of a perpetual Wild Take.

A frozen grin on the corpse's face is the trademark effect of Joker Venom, dating all the way back to the Joker's first appearance. In some cases, the venom even does it to living people that have recovered from the venom's effects, for that extra bit of horror.

In IDW's Transformers: Infiltration, the Autobots' holomatter avatars all had grins fixed on their faces. Fortunately, their human friends were able to clue them in what human expressions look like.

This trope is used to trick the reader (and the Joes) in an issue of GI Joe Special Missions: There's a hostage situation, but the man who appears grinning during the whole story, and assumed to be one of the kidnappers, is really a hostage whose face is frozen as a grin.

Commercials

Joan Rivers on that Geico commercial, in a Self Parody: "Am I smiling? I can't tell, Steve, I can't tell!"

Fan Works

Paul, literally, in With Strings Attached. In the Fourth Movement he discovers he can set his muscles so that he can prevent his face from showing emotion. It comes in very handy when he has to pretend for several days that he is mind controlled, and has to stand around listening to bizarre drivel from his controller.

Houseplants! Fucking houseplants!

In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World Paul finds even more use for this ability, as he uses it to hide potentially awkward or overly revealing emotions from both enemies and friends. In particular he uses it to hide his growing hatred of his magic from the others, as well as his jealousy of them.

Terminator: Throughout all of the original movie, played with in Judgment Day (when a young John Connor attempts to teach a Terminator how to smile, a lesson that sinks in when the Terminator gets his hands on Sarah's gun cache) and so on.

The William Castle film Mr. Sardonicus ("The Only Picture With the Punishment Poll") runs on this trope: it is the villain's defining characteristic (see the page pic), prime motivation, and preferred method of torture.

Literature

In Dan Abnett's Xenos, when Eisenhorn is tortured by a Chaos cult, the torture is fed up with Eisenhorn's grinning back at him in defiance and applies a nerve-severing device, declaring that Eisenhorn will never smile again, and indeed the nerve damage done is irreparable, even with the best Imperial medical technology. When a fellow Inquisitor reveals that he knows who a codename refers to, the shocked Eisenhorn is glad it will not show on his face. On the other hand, when he meets a friend again, he is distressed that his happiness does not show so easily.

The Man Who Laughs has Gwynplaine, who was the inspiration for the Joker above, can't do anything but smile in a rather hideous way thanks to scarring.

Boris Akunin's novel The Quest has such a character in the main cast. He was a WWI German soldier and had his face burned off by a flamethrower. His face is terribly scarred and unable to show emotion. He wears a mask that looks like a human face to look less hideous... but he never can show emotions on his face. on the other hand, he has several masks with different faces and can change them... so this is a mundane kind of Disability Superpower.

Aaron Demski Bowden's Night Lords novel Soul Hunter introduces The Exalted, former capitan of the VIII legion's 10th company, now possessed by a daemon of Tzeentch for many thousands of years. The constant Warp-induced mutations of its skull structure have left it incapable of anything but a rather painful looking grimace. Admittedly having More Teeth than the Osmond Family doesn't help either.

The Botox version caused some confusion for Cal Lightman in Lie to Me, because it made a woman seem like she was lying when she wasn't. In her case, though she's not highly sympathetic, she's not un-sympathetic either.

Newspaper Comics

In Prickly City, Winslow talks about how he feels, deadpan, and Carmen tells him he has to lay off the botox.

Calvin and Hobbes riffs on the old parental warning of "don't make that face or it'll stick that way" when Calvin's mother tells him that and Calvin is thrilled that he gets to be a terrifying freak. He holds the face for as long as he can until he realises that he's not getting much of a reaction from other people.

Played for laughs in Kingdom of Loathing. It's possible to find a turtle in the orcish frat house that has been so deeply traumatized by the things it's witnessed that its face is frozen in an empty grin.

In Kid Radd, Dr. Amp is a NPC character whose sprite is locked in a perpetual smiling expression.

Radd: You know, it's tough to take your moody recollections seriously when that goofy grin never leaves your face.

Dr. Amp: I'm scowling at you on the inside.

Web Original

Much like Kyubey above, Luzi of Opening Move has a frozen "cute" expression, repeatedly described by the protagonist as a 'flat rabbit face'.

Western Animation

Played with in Avatar: The Last Airbender. About half of Zuko's face is covered in burn scars, giving him a permanent glare on one side of his face, while the other side is normal (though usually glaring as well). It also has been shown to limit how wide his left eye can open. At best it can widen half as much as the other eye. This can be overcome by the rest of his face, but it still can make it look like he's glaring.

It's advised that anyone who tries to speak to Koh the Face-Stealer maintain one of these. Unless, of course, they WANT to have their face stolen and live(?) as The Blank.

Played for laughs in an episode of American Dragon: Jake Long when Spud tries his best to make the son of a prominent restaurant critic laugh while working at his mother's restaurant, and is horrified when the kid literally doesn't bat an eyelash at his antics. He finds out the next day that the kid had just come from the dentist and his facial muscles were numbed up so he couldn't smile, but he told his dad (the critic) that he had had "the best day ever", which got Spud's restaurant a glowing review.

In The Problem Solverz episode "Funny Facez", Buddy Huxton has this. It's explained that whenever someone is startled while making a funny face, their face will permanently freeze that way.

Hexadecimal from Reboot gives an odd variant on this one. Her face is locked in a permanent, unmoving expression, but she has many faces to choose from and can swap them at will with a wave of her hand.

In an episode of American Dad!, Francine gets a Botox injection in an attempt to appear more attractive to sexually-repressed Stan. For a good part of the episode, Francine reacts to Stan's antics in voice, but not in face.

Francine: "Am I scowling? I want to be scowling."

Rob McTodd from All Hail King Julien has had so much surgery done on his face, his face is more or less stuck in a squinty smile that he can't control.

There is a genetic disorder called Mobius Syndrome, which can cause paralysis of the facial muscles needed to smile, as well as those used to move the tongue and eyes. The condition can be fixed to varying degrees, though some choose not to.

And unlike the trope, since they were born that way, they may feel absolutely no angst about it whatsoever.

Paralysis of the facial muscles is a frequent symptom of Parkinson's Disease.

Japanese actor and director "Beat" Takeshi Kitano sustained nerve damage to his face following a motorcycle accident. His impassive gaze has become a trademark of his performances.

People with part of their face paralyzed often are seen as having frozen faces. Because only part of their face emotes, they are accused of not emoting even when they try.

People who have had heavy or frequent botox treatments, since the same toxins that reduce wrinkles also paralyze the face muscles. (Hence Joan Rivers' self parody.)

Humphrey Bogart's trademark voice and deadpan expression were both the result of facial nerve damage sustained in World War One.

Similarly, Sylvester Stallone's unique voice is the result of a clamp severing a facial nerve during Stallone's birth.

Meet Sober Sue, whose employer evoked her frozen face as part of a scam. He offered a prize of $100 dollars (in 1907 money) to anyone who could make her laugh, which of course would never happen. The idea was to lure in top-ranking comedians and get them to perform for free.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien suffered Bell's palsy in childhood, resulting in the left half of his face being paralysed.

People with some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder can come across like this. It's usually not that their muscles are stiff, but that they simply do not know how to consciously or subconsciously express emotions physically, giving them a detached and slightly eerie outlook.

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